Breyah Ogletree Named 2024 Joan Fernbach Kingson Award Recipient

Congratulations to Breyah Ogletree, an aide in Environmental Services, who was selected as the 2024 recipient of the Joan Fernbach Kingson Award.

Breyah was nominated by her supervisor, who remarked on Breyah’s friendly disposition and cheerful smile.

“Breyah is friendly to all,” the nomination said. “She talks to patients and their families as she cleans their rooms and is always willing to lend a hand to any one who needs it.”

The nomination mentioned her positive attitude, which her colleagues find to be a “light” to them.

The Joan Fernbach Kingson Award was established to recognize service or technical workers like Breyah, whose special interactions with patients and families give vivid expression to the values of care which Mrs. Kingson was committed to in her work with children and families.

Those values include treating each patient as an individual; respecting the social, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and physical needs of others, and welcoming families, especially the young, into the caring process. The often unseen gifts of service and technical workers acknowledged by this award include the gift of careful listening, the simple joy of human-to-human conversation, the sharing of silence, or the warmth of touch. In giving of themselves so generously to others, awardees help sustain the essence of humanity and exemplify the best traditions of Crouse Health.

About the Award
This annual cash prize is made possible by the family and friends of former Crouse Hospital patient Joan Fernbach Kingson, a nurse and educator who passed away in 2001. Syracuse University professor Eric Kingson was her husband and is the author of Lessons from Joan, Living and Loving with Cancer, a Husband’s Story. To see past recipients of the award, click here.